Starting a membership site is a great idea for anyone who wants to earn money by sharing their expertise with others. While there are various options for setting up and managing a membership business, the freedom to customize your member experience as well as the overall appearance and function of your membership site varies depending on the platform you choose to use.
Duda is a great choice for building membership sites, whether you’re someone creating a single site for yourself or a web designer, developer, or agency professional juggling multiple client sites. There’s no limit to the types of sites that you can create with Duda — and that includes membership sites.
What is a membership site?
Membership sites enable creators and business owners to build additional revenue streams by selling access to exclusive content only available to members. These sites are much more flexible than a traditional e-commerce model.
Many membership business owners sell access to continually updated content streams, including content libraries, private podcasts, digital downloads, and paid newsletters. However, membership sites are also great for selling one-on-one coaching, digital magazines, mastermind groups, and more.
Why build a membership on Duda?
Duda makes it simple to create a single membership site as well as various membership sites for clients. If you will be creating multiple membership sites, you can give each site unique membership plans, pages, and permissions. It’s easy to update and manage members-only content on each site through your Duda account.
Offering fully-managed membership site capabilities to your clients can help to differentiate your agency or web development business from competitors.
There are two ways you can build Duda membership sites: using Duda’s own Membership app, or with a third-party tool like MemberSpace. Below, we’ll discuss each option so you can decide which is best for your membership business.
Option 1: Build a membership with Duda Membership app
The Duda Membership app is available directly through the Duda App Store. Because it’s a native Duda product, it’s a very straightforward way of adding membership functionality to your clients’ sites.
With Duda’s Membership app, you can:
- Password protect individual top-level pages
- Set up automatic or manual member approval
- Customize plan signup forms
- Enable Google signup and login for plan members
The Membership app is fairly new, though, and there are some limits to its capabilities.
- There is one set signup page per client site
- It’s not currently possible to protect dynamic page content, store pages, and blog posts
- Protecting a top-level page does not automatically protect all its sub-pages
It’s also important to note that you cannot uninstall the Duda Membership app once you add it to a client’s site. You can remove the password protection on individual pages, but the member login page will remain live on the site.
Option 2: Build a membership on Duda with MemberSpace
If you’d like to build membership sites with more features and customization options, you’ll need to use a tool like MemberSpace which allows you to have full control of your member experience.
It’s very easy to make Duda membership sites with MemberSpace. Simply connect Duda and MemberSpace by adding a bit of code to each site header, and you’re all set. If the word “code” sounds intimidating, don’t let that part keep you from considering this tool. MemberSpace has already written the code for you—all you’ll need to do is simply copy and paste the code snippet.
When using MemberSpace with Duda, you can:
- Protect any page on a Duda site, including blogs
Build out all of your membership content on Duda. Then, easily add unlimited pages to your MemberSpace backend to protect them from non-members.
Protect pages on your Duda membership site with just a few clicks - List all plan signup information on one page, or separate landing pages
With individual plan sign-up links as well as a single link that displays all of your plan options, you can decide how you’d like to promote your membership options on your website. Add a single sign-up option, or list out a detailed breakdown of each plan.
Customize your pricing page with membership plan signup links - Connect a variety of leading third-party tools with Zapier
Set up customized automation between MemberSpace and other third parties — like automatically adding members to an email list, subscribing members to your private podcast, syncing member profile updates with other platforms, and more.
Automatically add new members to your email list - Add community forums with a Circle SSO integration
Seamlessly add members to a private community when they join your membership — they’ll be able to log in on both platforms using the same login credentials.
Connect a community forum like Circle where members can interact - Automatically protect every sub-page under a protected top-level page
Avoid the tedious work of individually protecting numerous pages one at a time. For example, if you’re protecting a blog, automatically protect each blog post with a single step — this includes new posts that have yet to be published.
Automatically protect subpages (e.g. blog posts) with a single step - Reduce manual work with member email notification workflows
Automatically send welcome emails, payment receipts, account approval notices, and more with various customizable membership emails. Don’t need to use certain emails? Easily disable any email with a simple *click*.
Send various automated emails to your members - Set up coupon codes, discounts, and one-time sign-on fees
Decide exactly how much to charge members and when. Offer promos, incentives, referral perks, and more.
Charge a one-time fee, multiple installments, or a recurring subscription 
Add on a one-time fee when members first join your membership site - Add a double layer of protection to individual content files
Safely secure your images, videos, documents, and more by adding an extra layer of protection. Decide who gets access to each piece of content and determine how you’d like members to access it — download the file, open it in a popup, or embed it directly on your website.
Create Content Links for each of your files before adding them to your Duda membership site - Customize every aspect of member pages and dashboards
Fully customize your content layout on Duda. Personalize the appearance of your member experience and set the tone with custom wording.
Change the look and feel of your membership site forms, buttons, alerts, and more - Offer your members a customized free trial period
Increase signups by giving members a limited time to try out your membership for free. Control exactly how long the free trial should last.
Offer members a customized free trial period upon joining your membership site - Create a member directory with a seamless Community Box integration
Dynamically display members on your Duda website. Choose which info should be shown for each member (e.g. image, name, email, social media handle, location, etc.).
Showcase your members on your Duda site - Drip out access to specific pages and content
Pre-sell content or simply keep your members wanting more with the option to slowly release new pages and content automatically. Decide if pages and content should become available on a certain day or a specific time period based on when a member joins.
Decide when members get access to membership pages and content - Set an expiration for membership plans
Automatically revoke access to outdated pages and content or simply encourage members to purchase a plan again by setting an expiration date or time period.
Set membership plans to expire on a certain day or after a specific time period
If you’re setting up a site on behalf of a client, you can sign up for a free Agency Account. With an Agency Account, you’ll have free MemberSpace access to connect and manage unlimited client sites, easy hand-off for completed sites, automated affiliate credit, the ability to offer clients a 10% discount on their first year of MemberSpace, and more.
If you prefer to maintain management of your clients’ sites and membership accounts, that’s no problem. With MemberSpace Agency Accounts, you’ll have the option to set up the site’s billing yourself or invite your client to do so. Even if you invite your client to establish the billing, you’ll remain an admin on that site. Otherwise, if you set up the billing yourself, you can simply add your client as an admin. Either way, your client will be able to manage their member plans and approvals, without needing to utilize the Duda website back end.
Which option is best for you: Membership app vs MemberSpace?
Ultimately, choosing the right option will depend on your membership needs. If your clients need simple password protection on static, top-level pages, the Duda Membership app will likely work for you.
However, if you’re in need of more robust membership management features, MemberSpace is a powerful yet efficient option. See how easily it integrates with your custom Duda site designs by signing up for free — and check out our complete guide to building a Duda membership site for more information.
